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American Morning
Authors Discuss Healthiness of Favorite Fast Foods
Aired May 20, 2002 - 09:49 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Time now to introduce you to this new book out from the so-called "food police." It is called "Restaurant Confidential," and it might just make you think twice about your favorite foods from your favorite restaurants. And the authors are Michael Jacobson and Jayne Hurley, from the Center for Science in the Public Interest. And they're with us now.
When restaurants see you coming, Do they panic?: Oh, my God, the food police are here again.
MICHAEL JACOBSON, AUTHOR, "RESTAURANT CONFIDENTIAL": Unfortunately, most restaurants don't recognize us because they don't care about nutrition. They care about labor cost, about rent, but nutrition is just -- it's not even an afterthought; they couldn't care less. What we are hoping is both to educate consumers about the foods that are going to or not going to cause heart disease or obesity and educate restauranteurs, because their foods don't have to be bad.
ZAHN: Let's cut straight to the chase this morning. Let's start off with a typical breakfast snack in many urban centers: Starbucks -- what is that?
JAYNE HURLEY, AUTHOR, "RESTAURANT CONFIDENTIAL": It's a Starbucks venti white chocolate mocha with a scone. I'm sure many people walk into Starbucks thinking they're going to get a cup of coffee and a snack. And they walk away with an entire meal's worth of calories.
ZAHN: Wow, look at that!
HURLEY: Just one of those drinks has 600 calories and 3/4 of a day's saturated fat. Essentially, it's like drinking a Big Mac. And the scone has 500 calories, 3/4 of a day's saturated fat; it's like having yet another Big Mac.
ZAHN: So instead, you could go have two Big Macs and do as much damage.
HURLEY: Just as much damage, exactly.
ZAHN: And probably feel satisfied a little bit longer in the day.
HURLEY: The nice thing about Starbucks is it's very easy to fix their drinks. How do you drink? Maybe with skim milk. If you skip the whipped cream, you are going to save a couple hundred calories right there.
With the desserts, you should look for low-fat ones. They have about half the calories.
ZAHN: Oh, yes, but they're not as much fun.
All right, let's move on to the tuna salad thing. I have to tell you I follow this stuff. This one shocked me. So you are going to look at a piece of -- what is this -- sandwich with tuna salad. And 700 calories -- where does that come from?
HURLEY: Well, actually, if you get mayo on the bread, you climb up to 800 calories. It's not the tuna fish -- it's fat free -- it's the 1/2 cup of mayonnaise that the tuna fish is drowning in.
ZAHN: A third of a cup -- is that what they put in on average at restaurants?
HURLEY: A typical standard -- not a overstuffed, not a supersized -- just a regular old tuna salad sandwich. And if you add the chips that many places serve, you're up to 1,000 calories for your lunch.
Good news, you can go to Subway. They make all their tuna salad with light mayo, and you could have two subway tuna subs and get no more calories or no more fat than you would from the one tuna sandwich.
ZAHN: Yes, but you still want to skip the chips, don't you?
HURLEY: They have Baked Lays.
ZAHN: OK, good to know.
Let's move on to this cheese fries with ranch dressing, which is very popular in many parts of the country. You have got to know looking at this that it's not going to be great for you.
HURLEY: Exactly. French fries coated with cheese and served with ranch dress on the side. But do people know how bad it really is. That's the single worst foot we've ever analyzed.
ZAHN: Three thousand calories?
HURLEY: In a portion. Three thousand...
ZAHN: Is that a portion or about four portions?
HURLEY: That's considered a portion. But you can see that you would have to split that with six, seven, or eight people to fit that into your diet. And four days worth of saturated fat. It's whetting your appetite with two entire T-bone steak dinners complete with baked potatoes and Caesar salad.
ZAHN: Wow! Four day's of saturated fat.
HURLEY: Split it with three other people, and you end up each person gets two Big Macs. That's the equivalent there.
ZAHN: Who ever thought that the Big Mac would make a healthy comparison here.
(CROSSTALK)
HURLEY: But there are other appetizers two that are popular people need to know about: Buffalo wings, beef and cheese nachos, stuffed potato skin, all well over 1,000 calories.
ZAHN: But it's still a better choice than this.
JACOBSON: Not that we're recommending those. Have a tossed salad. They're free in many places.
ZAHN: Let's quickly move on to the prime rib here or whatever. Is that prime rib? A caesar salad and a baked potato. How much damage would we be doing here if we ate (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?
HURLEY: We could start with a prime rib: 1,300 calories in a pound of prime rib. The loaded baked potato, which is topped with sour cream, bacon, and cheese, adds another 600 calories. The Caesar salad another 300 calories -- the entire meal 2,200 and four days' worth of artery-clogging saturated fat in your meal. Get a sirloin steak dinner, get a baked potato with sour cream, and a tossed salad, and you can cut the calories in half.
ZAHN: We just put up on the screen this General Tso's chicken, which is pretty much normal chicken fare, right, at most Chinese restaurants.
HURLEY: Very popular.
ZAHN: Look at that: 1,600 calories, 59 grams of fat.
HURLEY: The problem with this dish is, you can probably see by looking at it, you're getting mostly big chunks of battered fried chicken and very little vegetables. Such a shame because it's easy to get a healthy meal at a Chinese restaurant. If you get the stir-fried vegetable-rich dishes, like beef and broccoli or the Szechwan shrimp.
ZAHN: I don't know that you are going to convince people to make that switch.
But the pizza, which is considered a food group in my household, we all know it can't be the healthiest thing you're going to eat. What did you find with that?
I would like first to point out that just a plain old cheese pizza has half a day's saturated fat in a typical serving, which is a quarter of a large pie. The problem isn't the sauce. It's not the crust. It's the saturated fat in the layer of cheese. Now, when you add meat to the pizza, it just makes matters worse. For example, if you ate one slice of this Pizza Hut Stuffed Crust -- the cheese is stuffed in here -- and Meat Lover's pizza -- meat topping here -- you are going to do as much damage as eating one McDonald's Quarter Pounder. But while most people stop at a quarter pounder, very few people stop at one slice of pizza.
ZAHN: Well, of course not. You mow down that pie.
A final word of advice to people out there that want to make healthier choices but don't want to feel like they have to give up life completely with these choices.
JACOBSON: Eat carefully, and eat small. In "Restaurant Confidential," we rate every kind of restaurant from best to worst. So stick at the tops of the charts, and avoid the ones at the bottoms.
ZAHN: Best lesson you've learned?
HURLEY: If you are eating out, assume you are getting about 1,000 calories in your appetizer, your entree, or your dessert.
ZAHN: Apiece? So it's definitely a 3,000-calorie meal, no matter how you cut it.
HURLEY: It can be. And "Restaurant Confidential" has nutrition information on close to 1,500 restaurant foods. Get that information.
ZAHN: Now that you've written it, I wonder how many restaurants will invite you to their premises. The food police!
I think it's really important for people to understand. I was actually shocked reading through the book, particularly when it came to sodium content in a lot of this food we normally indulge in.
JACOBSON: That's right.
(CROSSTALK)
JACOBSON: If people ate at restaurants once a month, it wouldn't matter. But so many people are eating so often. Guess why obesity rates have been doubling.
ZAHN: A third of all Americans eat out.
HURLEY: A third of our calories come from outside of the home, and more than half of all Americans are overweight. And it's no wonder when you look at the calorie and fat levels in some of these extremely popular foods.
ZAHN: Wow. I'm hungry.
Jayne Hurley and Michael Jacobson.
(CROSSTALK)
JACOBSON: Thanks so much.
HURLEY: Thank you very much.
ZAHN: Let's see how much you've taught me here this morning.
Thanks again. Good luck. The authors of "Restaurant Confidential."
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